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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 1 Hansard (14 February) . . Page.. 169 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

of Canberra want a particular objective pursued, there should be a mechanism for directing an independent planning authority to do that.

That is what we attempted to do through the existing legislative arrangements last June and that is what I am attempting to do tonight. As elected representatives, we have a role to play too and it should be a clear and transparent one. That is the purpose of this motion.

I would ask members who voted for my motion last June to continue with their support, because nothing has changed. The heritage values of the place are still intact and significant. They still require protection; nothing has changed in that regard. But what we do have in the Old Red Hill precinct is a situation where two blocks are now the subject of development applications for dual occupancy proposals; so they have started, Mr Speaker. The subdivision of what Professor James Weirick describes as a rare 20^th century example of a garden city suburb is being threatened and its character is being undermined by dual occupancy proposals.

We need to send the message again, clearly and eloquently, that we will not permit the heritage values of one of Canberra's oldest suburbs, a suburb with clear heritage significance, a suburb with clear links to the work of Walter Burley Griffin and Sir John Sulman, to be compromised. I would urge members this evening to support this important motion.

MR KAINE (7.44): Mr Speaker, I must say that I totally support the proposition being put by Mr Corbell on this matter. I do not think that Mr Corbell should have to go through the justifications for retaining the heritage area there in its present form. I would have thought that that had been well and truly established a long time ago and that we would no longer be debating that matter.

Regardless of whether it is necessary to restate the reasons, the fact is that this Assembly passed a motion requiring the government to take certain action. My initial question, when I found out that that direction had been set aside or ignored, was to ask the minister: which part of "no dual occupancy" did you not understand? Having looked at the documentation associated with this matter, I think that in all fairness the minister did understand what the Assembly motion meant because he and Mr Moore, acting together as members of the executive, faithfully relayed that motion to the appropriate public servant responsible.

In fact, the wording is identical. They did not seek to vary it and they did not seek to play games; they merely relayed to the administration the resolution of this place.

I am afraid, Mr Speaker, that the question I must ask is not of the minister but of the responsible bureaucrat: which part of "no dual occupancy" did you not understand? It seems that Mr Smyth and Mr Moore passed the resolution on and, in fact, gave an executive direction to the effect, quite explicitly, that the administration "review the Territory Plan as it relates to Variation 114-Heritage Places Register-Red Hill Precinct to provide for a development intensity of no more than one dwelling on any block in the Red Hill housing precinct".

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